Since there’s been a lot of new projects that have featured the use of AI art, I was wondering if a category tag should be made for it. While I’m fairly indifferent to the usage of it for projects, I am aware that there are people who strongly dislike the use of AI art, so I can see the tag be used so that people who don’t like it can avoid the games that make use of them.
0 voters
An ai tag would help stop fighting over ai, as people who hate it would be able to avoid the tag.
I feel like I’m out of the loop, what new projects have been using AI art in them?
Well an AI tag would help people find them faster and easier also let people know what type of game it is.
Take your pick.
@bobothesecondtwo’s Fill Me Up (Formally “Untitled renpy feedee game”) “January” update now available on Patreon. - Projects - Weight Gaming
@SpicyFoxes Helpful Roommate (tiny weight gain VN) - Projects - Weight Gaming
@FaFeeder112’s Succubus of Gluttony V0.12 - 3rd Update live now with less but never no typos - Projects - Weight Gaming
@Weirdobeardo89’s New life: in the fat lane - my new text-adventure game with AI art. - Projects - Weight Gaming
@Lovesbellies Expanding the Business Portfolio - 0.3 NOW OUT! New Characters, More Weight Gain, Quality-of-Life Improvements - Projects - Weight Gaming
@hisano-x’s Growing of Virtue - Projects - Weight Gaming
@Hvostt’s Curvy Town v-0.1.2 - Projects - Weight Gaming
@Jupiter’s The Grandmaster of Gluttony [v0.3.0 Release!] - Projects - Weight Gaming
I’m sure there more missing outside of what I can think of here, and then plenty of games using AI art for backgrounds, or placeholders, etc.
People already don’t properly use the tag system.
What difference would this make?
The minor issue here is that it’s not obvious how to search for something that doesn’t match a tag, which is what most users who don’t like AI art would want. The syntax is a little obscure and only works in the basic search function, not the advanced one (which is a problem for the developers of Discourse, not us). For example to search for any project that don’t have the tag “ai”:
#projects -tags:ai
The bigger problem is that tagging is entirely optional and left up to the OP. While it would be possible for the mod team to add tags while we only have a dozen or so examples, it isn’t likely a long term solution as more of these types of games are created.
As long as the forum is built on Discourse, tags are going to be a problem, honestly. The only straightforward solution to lack of tagging is some form of community tagging system but that opens the way for potential abuse of the tagging system.
The method I can think of right now (which I doubt Discourse would handle) would be some variant of;
Before anyone looks at the above post and goes ‘gee that sounds like a good idea mr poster’, here’s some things to think about.
Perhaps I’m a bit biased because I make stuff with stable diffusion, but do that many people dislike AI art on principle?
I can understand disliking it for certain common shortcomings that it often has, like strange rolls where they shouldn’t be, double belly buttons, weird hands, etc. But I think there are varying amounts of effort that a person may put into AI artwork, just like any other kind of artwork.
I guess what I’m getting at here is this: What does it even mean to “dislike AI art”?
Would you say most people that dislike it do so because of ethical concerns about intellectual property?
Hello! I am an artist and I can hopefully answer the questions about disliking AI image generators!
Firstly: Intellectual property theft: People take the artwork that we make and use it without the artists consent, and possibly also for profit, which is flat out illegal under copyright law as far as I am aware. These generators (as far as I know) tend to hide the data they’ve gathered so as to make artists less aware of the thievery. Even if they were made aware however, it’s not like the average artist is particularly wealthy enough to file a lawsuit, so the companies behind the AI generators continue to get away with it.
Secondly: Intent: People using AI image generators have been using them in the most unethical ways possible, such as trying to pass off an artists work as their own, using it to cheat their way out of paying for a commission, or making deep fakes nudes of people online. AI generators are built off the backs of artists, and without them, AI generators would be nothing; or at least, would not be anywhere near as effective as they are currently.
Thirdly: Soul: AI image generators take the passion of creation and the emotion poured into and the feelings evoked by art and degrades it to the level of mere content. To be art, it needs to be made by a human being, as humans are the only beings (that we know of) that are capable of such complex thoughts and intents as to create something from nothing. AI generators cannot do this. If they could, we would have hit the singularity. For something to be art, it has to be made by a human being, or an equally sapient entity.
That being said: I am not a luddite. I do not dislike the technology in itself. I dislike the people who use this new tool in the most depraved and corrupted ways possible. I dislike that it was made by capitalists, against artist, off the backs of artists. There are ethical ways of using this technology, however, currently it is a wild and unregulated territory and until legalities and ethics are sorted, or they die alongside NFT’s, I will continue to dislike AI generated images.
A/N: I should also make it clear that in spite of my very clear dislike, this isn’t meant to be an attack against you or anyone else who uses these generators here! Just that there are serious ethical and legal concerns with AI image generator use that other people commit.
interesting take, I disagree with most of it. I’m not on a fetish forum to debate tho, so lets agree to disagree.
Thank you great and honourable lord Krod for the mention 
Addressing the legality only: you are likely not protected by copyright. If you uploaded art to a social or art site their terms and conditions will grant them the right to make unlimited copies and distribute them. It has to be this way for the website to work: for someone to view your art a copy has to be transferred from the host site to the end user’s machine such that it can then be rendered into pixels for display. As for the generators themselves a strong argument can be made that they are transformative, and since (currently) only a human can hold copyright on artwork the generated art is copyright free.
Most of the data sets are in the public domain - they aren’t hidden (except for OpenAI/Dall-E?). However most individuals lack the equipment, bandwidth, or technology to process a dataset of 600 million images.
If you are an EU citizen (or country with similar laws) then your best protection likely comes from the GDPR which requires the purpose of the collected data to be declared and the user to agree before it is collected and requires there to be a provsion for a user’s data to be removed. It’s extra-territorial too. Lots of big-tech has played fuck-around-and-find-out with the EU - but expect the time frame to resolve this to be measured in years.
The other challenge is likely to come from the likes of Getty Images, Adobe, and the like whose sites were also scraped. They likely have the necessary clout in jurisdictions where wealth rather than legality has a significant impact on “legal” outcomes.
Just because they’re allowed to make unlimited copies and distribute them for the site to function doesn’t mean that copyright wouldn’t apply - it doesn’t magically change the ownership of the artwork created. It just means they’re allowed to use it for that purpose. The artwork itself isn’t entirely “transformative”, because you can even catch it recreate entire images, watermarks, screenshots, photos, etc.
The artwork generated by ai is built on artwork scraped without consent of the people who uploaded the art, and we shouldn’t have to be an “opt-out” system that involves the artist having to go to every data set and doing exactly that. “Public Domain” or not, that only means we can find it - but like you said, that in itself is a challenge. On top of that, the ai cannot create anything that isn’t within its data set(s) - it only plagiarizes. You can see it with accounts that deliberately are trying to recreate certain artists’ styles, as well as a recent “movie trailer by ai” that went viral a week ago - you could literally see a clip of an actual actor who looked like he’d been turbo-smoothed (because the ai was trying to recreate it and it came out poorly).
On top of that, a lot of the people who use ai for artwork tend to be extremely defensive about it when called out on it, or even outright malicious about it. I’ve seen a large amount of “ai artists” that are saying they’re happy to use it to “destroy artists”, as though artists are the 1% or something. O_o"
There’s also the fact that it can be so destructive that it’s why the current Writer’s Strike in the US is even happening at the moment (abuse of ai to cut costs and cheap out on paying writers/artists).
I’m upset about the outcome of ai’s usage here by so many bad actors, because I genuinely believe it could be useful in practice - it may not be able to create new things, but that means it could be useful for references (while bearing in mind you’d need to make sure it doesn’t spew out nonsense), like for backgrounds. At the end of the day, ai is a tool, and it’s abuse is saddening to see because it ruins it for those who may have even wanted to try it out for help.
I want to see as many category tags as possible. Doesn’t matter if I like or don’t like AI arts. It is always better to have more tags to filter different things.
There’s a lot of hyperbole in your post.
Firstly complaining about things happening elsewhere: take it up there, not here. We are not an art site, we don’t control or moderate what happens on those sites. If you have an issue with an actual post made by an actual user (or so-called “bad actor”) here then flag the post: we won’t tolerate the kind of behaviour you describe on these forums.
In regard to copyright not being a useful tool: No, it doesn’t change ownership of the original art, however by agreeing to the T’s and C’s and posting your art on a site you have granted copyright (lit. the right to make copies) to that site and the end user. Most terms do not specify or limit the purpose. Spidering the site and building a dataset would be legal - it’s what all search engines do and has been tested in court. Using that dataset to train a generative engine is just transforming the data. Now, if you could write a prompt that would generate a good facsimile of your own work you’d have a case - but that’s a big if. There would be little point in trying if your art isn’t even in the training data (from what I’ve briefly looked at it really is the best of the best).
I’m not defending it, just pointing out the problems, which is why I mentioned the GDPR as it is very explicity opt-in (unlike the DMCA). If artists are not adequately protected in a country, then that’s an issue to take up with the country’s legislative branch of government.
Regarding plagirism: This is an ethical concern where there are only penalties in an academic environment. Outside that, it’s only illegal if it violates copyright (see above). It’s also rather simplistic to suggest that a generative model can only regurgitate things it has already been shown (it can go beyond that). The same is true of the bulk of human artists and their artwork. Most will turn to reference material or other artists work (prior to image search artists were actively encouraged to build up their own library of reference images), which is what a generative model effectively does.
Regarding the Writer’s Strike: This is a dispute primarily about pay, not AI. The principle concern is that contracts failed to anticipate streaming services so writers don’t get paid for re-runs like they did on broadcast channels. On the flip side, streaming services have allowed the creation of more inventive things that would have been crushed by the medioce state of US TV and Movie making. It will be interesting to see the outcome in regard to AI tools, as obviously they could either help or replace writers. Writers will have to choose which - they likely can’t have AI assistance if they ban AI writing. But the strike itself is a wholy predicatable event, contracts expire, strike, even poorer and/or cancelled shows, contracts re-negotiated, work resumes. The SAG is up next. Meanwhile in other territories work flourishes…
I too am concerned about the applications of AI, and I don’t think it would be wise to replace the kind of artists who can create a good background, or whatever else (writing, programming, world building …) - you don’t get to pick and choose! Each one of those is someone’s passion and/or job. Edit: I find it somewhat ironic that artists have also been trying to use AI to generate code - hint: it sucks donkey balls at RenPy script.
Given the focus here of games though, and encouraging people to make their own, what would you do? Few artists would even consider putting in the commitment and effort without recompense that developers do (and very few developers are also talented artists), so we are left with the choices of AI art, stolen art, a very limited set of public domain pieces, or no/limited art in games.
While the legal questions remain unanswered you’ll have to make your own choices about the ethics of using AI in whatever you choose to do, as will everyone else.
I wasn’t saying anything about the site having to moderate other sites. I specifically just stated an opinion about the systems used by AI and why artists have beef with them - I have no particular reason to believe that this site wouldn’t moderate it, and having the tag would help people be more transparent with their use of AI for their projects.
However, to roll back to the ToS for other sites, most people didn’t sign these terms and conditions when these types of systems were created (typically they were signed years before), and didn’t upload their works with the concept that their works would be used in generative artworks - they just didn’t exist at the time. And now, after the fact, people are finding out their works have been put in these data sets that they didn’t deliberately consent to because people scraped sites for it without any idea of asking the artists involved. Even if they did disagree to the ToS and removed their account(s), their works are already in the dataset. There’s people who literally cannot consent to it as well, because either they’re deceased, or they’ve disappeared off of the internet. And you’re right that it’s an ethical concern - but that shouldn’t make it okay to do.
The use of AI to replace writers (not entirely) was one of the proposals made by film studios, which would result in a pay cut for writers due to less work scheduled. It’s not the main issue there, you’re right, it’s just a part of it. It was just an example.
And when I pointed out the applications of AI, I was giving an example - it’s a tool, like a reference. It would be a way to get an idea of what you want to draw, just like a reference - rather than copying, which would be in the same vein as tracing your references (plagiarism).